English says military support for US will be considered ‘on merit’

Prime Minister Bill English says any military support New Zealand provides to the US in the wake of an attack from North Korea would be considered “on merit.”

This follows Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull saying Australia would “come to the aid of the US” if it was attacked by the rogue nation.

“If there is an attack on the United States by North Korea, then the Anzus treaty will be invoked and Australia will come to the aid of the United States, just as if there was an attack on Australia, the United States would come to our aid,” he told Australian media this morning.

Mr English’s comments were a touch more diplomatic, telling NZ Newswireany military support at this stage is hypothetical and he's still focused on a “peaceful resolution” of nuclear threats between the two nations.

“While there's been an escalation of rhetoric there isn't any indication that military action's going to occur,” he says.

“We're in close contact with the US and Australia but any decision New Zealand makes about North Korea we make according to our own interests.”

A spokeswoman for Foreign Affairs Minister Gerry Brownlee confirmed this means New Zealand is under no legal obligation to fight with the US if it were to arise.

In a statement, Mr Brownlee says "this is a time for caution.

“Australia is our only formal ally and if the situation did develop into an armed conflict we would assess our options at the time,” he says.

“Committing to an aggressive response now – while encouraging all involved to avoid escalation – is not a position we want to take.

“The call from the international community is for North Korea to accept its legal obligations and abide by the numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding it desists from its missile testing and weapons development programme."

The Anzus treaty
The Anzus treaty, signed in 1952, recognised that an armed attack in the Pacific area on one member would endanger the peace and safety of the others.

The signatories – New Zealand, Australia and the US – pledged to "act to meet the common danger."

But in the mid-1980s, when the Labour government announced its decision to ban ships that were nuclear-powered or potentially nuclear-armed, New Zealand was effectively frozen out of ANZUS by the US.

‘Fire and fury’
Earlier this week, after North Korea revealed it was considering firing misses at the US-held Pacific island of Guam, US President Donald Trump warned North Korea it would face “fire and fury like the world had never seen” if it threatens the US.

Asked about the comments earlier this week, Mr English told reporters Mr Trump’s comments were not helping the situation.

“I'm worried those comments are not helpful when the situation's so tense. And I think you're seeing a reaction from North Korea that indicates that kind of comment is more likely to escalate than to settle things.”

He said everyone wants to avoid military confrontation and the recently imposed UN sanctions will help “push them in the right direction.”

41 Comments & Questions

Maybe start first by telling that lunatic Trump to stop promoting and enticing North Korea to launch missiles

How the world has changed - when the Cold war was on it was the deformed Russian leaders making irrational decisions - now the leading country in the western world is the aggressor and the leader of the USA not even looks like an old Russian leader but acts like one

Yes, gosh. It was great how under that sensible leader Obama the North Koreans didn't launch any missiles, nor conduct any nuclear tests.

Do you have even the slightest evidence for your claim about election delays, or is it just dribble like the birther movement, many of whom also claimed the same rubbish about Obama wanting to become dictator.

Ok so we all sit back while Trump provokes and starts the nuclear war and also a war with Venuzuela ( please tell me why the USA has the right to go to war with them except to protect the USA corporates stealth of their oil )
And then a trade and IP war with China

Yeah that is so clever and great for the future of the world

Do you think it might all be tactics to deflect what a crook Trump is and the Russian saga or his corporations financially benefitting from his huge conflict of interest.
Hope your kids and gran kids still respect you as their future vaporizes

Your theory would allow the European Union to invade the USA for the sake of world peace - to get rid of a tyrant!!!

I think that North Korea has threatened to attack the US/SK when they last held joint exercises. And the time before that. And the time before that one. And when the UN imposed sanctions. And when a ski lift wasn't delivered because of said sanctions.

In other words, they're crap at following through on their threats. Just about as bad as you are at logical thought processes.

Well, we could always offer them the combat wing of our air force, you know the one, the one that the Government was going to modernise with F15's at the end of the 1990s. But then one of the worst Prime Ministers we have had ever, Helen Clarke, and her nanny-state Labour Party arrogantly canceled that upgrade and smugly destroyed the air force altogether because New Zealand didn't need one. With self-righteous and perverse judgments like that, she wonders why she was considered unsuited for the role of Director-General of the UN.

The main strategic value of NZ is the airfields which could be used as a static US aircraft carrier to defend Australia or if captured as a base for long range Mach 2 Soviet Blackjacks and Backfires bombers to cut the sea lanes from the US to Japan and Australia. An argument could be made that seizing NZs long airstrips and the North Island at the start of war could give a war winning advantage. The RAAF or any planes the RNZAF could have fielded were mainly just useful as an alternative for training the other forces and high tech industries the A-4s and Canberras were justs one way nuclear bombers and only useful if so armed.

Not sure if serious or just not on pills? You're the same guy who thinks that Russia could assemble an amphibious invasion force to grab Fiji without anyone noticing.

There is zero value to basing bombers in NZ to cut sea lanes between the US and Japan. Russia has this place called Vladivostok. You may have heard of it. It's thousands of km closer to those sea lanes and has all the infrastructure needed to support bomber regiments. How do you suppose your Auckland based Backfires are going to get reloads for their missiles? Spare parts? Associated airbase SAM defence systems? By the same invisible undetectable amphibious invasion force?

Well of course in the six months before the Cuban missile crisis , Russia managed to infiltrate into Cuba missile fields and huge support. Given effective disarmament of NZ and only short ranged RAAF with a small number of F18 and Poseidon surveillance aircraft as few as 6000 russian troops could rapidly seize key airfields and most of the NIsland. If their air strips were ready at Mangare ,&Whenapui I, heavy Russian and Chinese transport planes could also land. The opposition the NZ army could provide would not provide much heavy counter and the Russians would also inevitably capture NZDF equipment.
Heavy Russian backfire and blackjack could cut Pacific and SouthernOcean seal lanes from the North Pacific to the other side of Antarctica with 7000 mile radius there and back severing Australia from fast sea links from australia

The Backfire has a combat radius of approx. 2400km. That's to Sydney at back at best, not "teh entire pacific and south poll". Your entire post is military fantasy. Roll d20 to see if the Russians have dragons and ghosts on their side too.

I feel the public need a few facts, about who actually you are, judging from your rhetoric, social scientist, psychologist or more likely some National Party North Shore associate, as the associates tend to be the most inaccurate on defence in NZ, other than the backcountry cretins on Sth Canterbury , the only place on earth were the belief that Nuclear Power, Science and Dairying were intelligent answers was not discedited more than 50 years.
In looking at defence statistics or the numerous published sources of plane range, payload, speed it always has to be taken into account that such things are highly variable according to age of the plane, climate, height etc and the figures are unlikely to be accurate on anything in serious use . The same applies to naval craft, torpedoes, missiles etc. Often with missile systems, torpeodoes etc, they may not even work and supposed hit rates and range figures will always be rigged or the definiton of success changed to achieve a tick given commerical reality of contracts and financing and the need of a nation to present a credbile image to maintain arms sales and the safety of its borders.
There is no doubt that Russia even in 2017 is capable of delivering groups of TU22 and TU 160 to extremely distant targets with payloads of 20,000lbs of stand off missiles and bombs. As I have pointed out Russia has in 2016/17 flown a number of mass Backfire/Blackjack missions of at least 14,000 km with obvious a group of say 8 Backfires/ Blackjack with a number of air tankers obviously giving aerial refueling, leaving airfields on Koala Penninsular stradling the West Coast of the UK, Spain centrelining the med and hitting targets in Syria and returning over Iran/ Iraq (extraordinary that ) to touch down at Engels airfield at Moscow. The figures you quote for the range of the Backfire are meaningless and you clearly have no more than checked wikipedia for a second ( I have written much of the key RN, RNZN cold war ( I view the RNZN Dido class cruisers as really HM cruisers and believe the RNZN can only partly ever be regarded as an independent force - as you need a lot of ships at least 10 with weapons to be a Navy and any real Army has to be larger than the present UK one to actually be an Army, so we havent got that either) on WW2 war and post war cruisers, ( not the Leander or Archilles) , County Class GM, some significantly on the final generations RN 1950s- !960s strike carriers and some contribution most of the 1957-1992 RN escorts and other articles on NZR post war diesels and electrics, nb JA and DJ among others, some UK politicians and US articles some at the forefront of the cold war, Reader figs on those articles are irrelevant as there are hundreds of wiki replica and repeat versions of wikipedia and military use is closed and not tabulated and in many cases use figs are rigged for whatever purpose.
My scenario of how vulnerable NZ is to Russian invasion is of course speculative and a scenarion but like all my defence analysis considers the logistics, mathematical possibility and is more than possible if a strip at say Whenuapeu or Mangare could be upgraded to the length and strength required. Landing supporting Antropov transports would not require anytyhing like the airfield. From Auckland with or without tankers Long range Soviet bombers would certainly sever the most direct sea lanes from Australia to the US both North to the Equator and south to Antarctica and also greatly restrict Japns trading options thru the Singapore and Southern straights.
My invasion scenario is that several thousand Russian infanty enter NZ as touriss others arrive on a couple of cruise ships as tourists obstensiby and the immedaite pressuire and invasion is a landing of trawlers or a sub in Wellington harbour and a cruisser group detected running at NZ from the Coral Sea or New Caledonia and only 30hrs warning.
Edited

Tourists and submarines huh? That's a pretty good way of bring in all the logistics and heavy artillery you need to take even a small military like NZ's down. Not! There is a word for a group of parachutists who aren't relieved within 72 hours of landing (and the same applies even more so to "tourists" who can't even bring in small arms). The word is prisoner.

So your scenario relies on an invisible amphibious force and the Russian's basing all their naval strike bombers down here where they are 6,000+ km away from any potential target. Or on the Russian's magically creating 5 x their existing number of air-drop capable aircraft and tankers and then wasting them on a questionable drop on somewhere a very long way away from anywhere relevant.

There is more chance of you winning a Grammy for singing a Britney Spears cover than there is of your scenario being realistic. Opps I did it again.

Grumpy was sort of devils advocate or idiot are you. NZ has no heavy artillery or armour. My view is we may have a few old105mm howitzers and the last imitation tank the old Scorps threw its tracks on Wairou's hills thirty years. Fairly obviiusly the Russians would just seize the APCs , Pingauzzers and various Belgian machine guns ,that NZLP and friend of the Generals, Clark ordered for the Army. Given they have nothing more a 30mm cannon and the Army truck drivers are wellknown for going over cliffs, my general assesment the NZ Army would not be anysort of problem. After alll these people work for very low salaries and leaving aside the effective SAS and some of the Maori units and officers, they could outsmarted by almost anyone. At a university display for recruitment I once asked the soldiers manning the desk about the new machine gun they had behind them. it was clear they had no idea of how to operate and despite only have fired an air rifle only once or twice as a kid, I had to point out to them how to use it. I have numerous other personal anecdotes.I There is also the small matter of the complete dissapperance of MH370 over where and the fact the only thing truly known about its flightpath is nothing certain from half an hour after its takeoff . In WW2 Battleships were supposedly easy to track. At the heigh of US control of the Pacific in 1944, in the Battle of Leyte Gulf the 80,000 to dinasour Yamoto got 2,000 miles south, emerging to attack significant light US Carriers having never been noticed by US surveillance. Its a general rule of warfare that if a country has no defence and no real allies it is s open to invasion. Particulary if its has no idea of the generally predatory and dog eat dog nature of the world and most of all is well out of range of protective air cover from any likely ally ( I doubt if even USAF Raptors or US KC135 tankers could ever be available quickly to provide Auckland with air cover of one imagines such US support is likely. Stangely invasion forces often even during war are often noticed until they arive and often come in trojan use form of troops intruded into the country or having arrived as Tourists on cruise ships, for eg the Nazi take of Norway in 1940. The invasion or takeover scenario I provide might simply happen always noticed after Chinese and Russian troops had arrived here under some pretext or project or in a period of growing economic pressure, movement of say Russian/ Chinese shipping into how harbours was hardly acknowledged by the Government. We might just find it has happened and we are under Russian and Chinese control. It was noticeable that during a recent Chineses naval vessels with a couple of Chinese destroyers berthed at the Viaduct I was the only European who wandered down to have a look and there were 700 enthused Chinese on the wharf. I waved a confederate flag at the Chinese at protest against both the hosting of a Chinese warship visit and because I refuse to show any support for Obama polices like state expanded health care which I consider against peoples real interests. Given the look of the Chinese officers it seemed unwise to go up the gangplank and I was sort of rescued by a visiting Columbian soccer team and their girlfriends who dragged me into the bar they were drinking at alongside. I know the head of the Army Geenral Keating is vistiting Chinese but I don't approve of the relationship, which seems to be naive and a betrayal of our natural stand and alliances. I would prefer it was the prickly Japanese rather than the military dictatorship

Well I don't know what your background is, but I spent two years working for a Ministry of Defence in a role involving high-level logistics including 1999 and Kosovo . So I know damn well how hard it is to move people from point A to point B and have them capable of doing anything.

So your the NZDF(ret) generals, Dunne and Rhy Jones. If so I, am the obviously effective RN Battlecruiser Hawke which runs only ajewel ot the night and my mother whose main reading interest how close the House of Hanover came to capturing the Brtish line for the Kaiser and who was probably a general in the SS by the time she was 15 and a Kreigsmarine Admiral at 20 if Hitler had had his way. I mean her proudest claim was to have met Von luckner , 6 times at 1938 in Wellington.

In the unlikely event they needed, heavy sea lift to assist an invasion of NZ with its nonexistant armed forces, they can surely improvise as they did effectively six months before the Cuban missile club or just buy back the new support the former 'Vladivostok' from Egypt. They may well have done so already for a $! peppercorn and it is sure to be half manned by Russians. After all it is standard Russian Naval practice to operate interchangable indenties for major warships and Mountbatten probably adopted the practice as well. Grumpy than retired Generals Dunne and Rhy Jones who apparently were little more than enthusiasts who liked to dress up in uniforms fror Sleeping Dogs and Apocalypse Now. I mean can you imagine what General Wesley Clark and K Jackson who have said when they heard they were recieving a kiwi contriubtion of a NZDF Batallion with a dozen tracked 1944 APC and 8 pack 105 howitzers and an infantry with dubious Steyr rifles. I mean they couldnt say no to Bolger and McKinnon. I was having a look at Anthony Beevors latest edition of 'Crete'. Beevor is even stronger in his criticism of the failings of General Freyburg to, meet the demands of modern war in clear fast decisionmaking and leadership and his misreading of Ultra and failure to grasp that the intelligence should have made clear a German attack would be exclusively airborne and that there would be no other primary or secondary wave as the Germans lacked the shipping.. Even then at its best the NZDF was something of a fantasy as it seemed to consist only of Maori units and two snipers, Hulme and Upham and later in Africa, Freyburg and Montgomery seemed to take an awesome time to round up the Africia Core which was nothing more than a diversionary mission like the Raiders in the pacific to waste British resources. Claims Montgomery's effort diverted German armies from the Eastern Front is the ultimate fantasy of the British

The USA are our allies, and we will stick by them no matter what, and so we should. It must be remembered that we and other counties around the world owe them a debt that can never be repaid just over the second world war alone.

We obviously didn't as our major contribution was to provide airfields, ports and rest and recreation. eg as we did during the Vietnam war in Wellington for USS Enterprise. America, Shangri La and Intrepid. Closing our ports violated our obligation to prepare and contribute under collective defence under ANZUS treaty and the 2014 wellington decleration confirmed we accepted the US no longer had any defence agreement to defend or supply us. In return for US making now and then political ship visits. Ivan, the kiwi population no longer has any understanding of who our friends are.Anything is possible given Malaysia and Fiji desire.for the worst alliance partners and Paul Buchanan noted in Monocle that Russia was probably interested in a naval base at Suva less than a year ago. Even the hypocritical.left seems to imagine that our deserted allies are still easily willing and able to defend us. In reality previous western leaders Obama and Cameron were out of touch or more than Trump and Key. Obama decided to run the
Best USN cruisers
In the Baltic and Black Sea as ABM units in violation of international law and the reality of Z1915 its very difficulty to retreat through the Bosperouus.Cameron scrapped all the RAFs anti sub planes and reduced the Royal Navy to the size it couldn't send a frigate to the RNZN 75th. Recently the USN has had two of its cruisers stopped by enemy action. A hostile.freighter ramming a cruisers superstructer in off Yokohama and the Russians using ESM electronic warfare to render the USS Cook defenceless as Russian attackjets buzzed the terrified crew all afternoon. The US fleet is.on cybernetic intense care as much as the Russian fleet. The US CVNs are little than targets and communication and command and control problems with the Ohio class make them nothing more than post war doomsday units, usable only in war as tactical cruise missile sub's for up to ,30 kiloton.military targets

Your obviously knowledgeable on the modern day USA military force, of which I am not. I only know that if it wasn't for the yanks "we" most probably wouldn't be here now. Our country would be one of the many states of the rising sun.

Do we support the US if they attack North Korea first?
Do we support the US if they use nukes first in a pre emptive strike?
If the US doesn't succeed in finding and destroying all the NK nukes and they start obliberating NK mountains in their quest, how many mountains will they have to vaporize before the world enters a nuclear winter?

Tambora is the only eruption in modern history to rate a VEI of 7. Global temperatures were an average of five degrees cooler because of this eruption; even in the United States, 1816 was known as the “year without a summer.” Crops failed worldwide, and in Europe and the United States an unexpected outcome was the invention of the bicycle as horses became too expensive to feed.

Almost 550 Megatons of above ground explosions, of which approx. 330 MT were thermonuclear. Not counting another 80MT or so which were underwater. This includes 12 tests that were 10MT or greater in output with the biggest being 50MT on its own.

So only 12 thermonuclear tests. How many of those were airbursts and how many at ground level?
So how many nukes will it take to try to get to an unknown number of NK nukes hidden in unknown locations buried deep under mountains. Is it even possible to get all the NK nukes even if the US used all the thousands of megatons of nukes at their disposal?
If NK managed to fire off even one nuke that hit a city how would the US respond?

Now while I take your basic point, those 550 nuclear explosions didn't just all happen at once but over decades. In a nuclear war, however, particularly one between the major powers, you might get 500 detonations within a week. It might not generate a nuclear winter, but there will be environmental and global consequences and a very much diminished societal capacity to deal with it.

12 that were 10MT or greater. 330MT that were thermonuclear (i.e. fusion bombs).

Some ground-burst, some airburst. And almost all over a period of less than 12 years. So call it 50MT (or 50 blasts) per year (equivalent to about 2000 Hiroshima bombs) and you'd be about right. Which is certainly about 10 times higher than any likely NK vs. US exchange and probably more so.

Indeed I very much doubt there'd be even one used on North Korea unless they got extremely lucky and managed to get a hit on the US (which given their record of missile failures I suspect the odds in their favour aren't actually better than 50/50). Would a failed nuclear attack be grounds for retaliation? No idea.

There is no doubt that the intention of Helen Clark and the Labour left was to withdraw from Anzus from the start and orchestrate a situation where that could be achieved. Labours policy from the later Rowling era from say 1981 of calling for a non nuclear Anzus was clearly recognised by Clark as impossible and purely for the election in a letter she wrote to me in probably about late May 1984. ( I dont have a copy now, but the authorities did get to see it in 1984, I showed it to Jim Sutton years later in the 1990s and I may also have shown it as some time to Micheal Vance the editor of Timaru Herald were I wrote editorials/ articles for in 1984-Feb 2006 3-5 days a week 9-5 at the TH offices. I was no part of the Labour Party or the left at the time, although I did attend the Jan Walker selection meeting and heard Clark speech as the chairman of the selection meeting - a fairly conventional presentation in which Clark in black ( jacket ) office worker chic, still in what I call good looking sex communist bait look, argued that the safe Labour seat should elect a quality Cabinet material member , ie Walker not Connoly. i was not a member,there was no door check, I did chat to Jan Walker - who I had never met previously.
Clarks intention re Anzus were always obvious, but I had never heard of her until I read her maiden speech about 1982, what disturbed me was her and associates proposals were for some kinds of neutralised NZ with arms forces modeled on Warsaw Pact member Finland, which seemed only to be in the interests of Russia- given that Finlands Army large army and Fast Attack Navy were irrelevant to our needs and she obviously woulnt have wanted westernised Mig 21s and expensive British light Haw fighters. I didn't know her at all, I was staggered when she brought all those Lav 3 light APCs and expanded the Army to waste the defence budget. I would have assumed her main interest was the general idea of decoupling NZ from hard line capitalism due to a childish view in human equality, the balnk slate theory and that ugly fat women were to be respected. I was impressed that she was good looking and obvious brilliant in terms of NZ politics. As I walked along Queens St I assess how tight the tail and butt is to be polite of every women from 14-55 ( only about 1/100 of the tails are lethal enough to be worth more than a glance, and Clark was just good looking white tail and pure evil, in the sense I thought she was wrong about everything, but her general belief in opposing all marriage and believing skin on skin sex was the answer to all human problems.
Clarks general approach was to assess and control people by assessing there sex and chemical agent interests and changing key settings. My view of how to corrupt and control would not be all that different but I do believe she really had much judgment on the settings.
I would assume that Clark was already prepared to fully support five eyes from June 1984 even before the election due to a prefence for soft over military power ( I happen to know it as a fact) and that she was apparent to do that deal with the Americans from very early. My own political interest at the time was like most people was to see Muldoon thrown out as I considered he had wrecked the nation by doing nothing and wasting money on all the wrong things - like high wages rather than capital investment in defence and transport and that the deterioration and age of such things like the frigates meant they could no longer be modernised. Also in NZ things had opened up in Auckland and Wellington in 81-84 with some more sophisticated bars and quite a lot of change and there were now a range of ideas in Labour, also critically I thought the cold war had detuned critically with Reagan less ferocious. I never for Clark much politically as I was mainly against nuclear power and propulsion which was primitive hybrid systems based on steam ( my article in NZIIA for the Institute of International Affairs J/F 85 made the point that by the late 1970s and in the early Reagan period the USN was no longer interest in converting the fleet to nuclear power and intended to use nuclear power only for submarines and strike aircraft carriers- and therefore the NZMFATs position was irrelevant and the real issue was purely about nuclear weapon access, although the political issue was about nuclear power) and my own view was the tactical nuclear weapons which were usable were essential to containing fast Russian and Chinese nuclear and 25 knot diesel submarines and unlike Clark I believed much more in high spending on public rail transport and less on social housing .
My own appalling position on nuclear weapons was that of the RN and German Army in 1984 a desire to reduce tactical nuclear weapons to the level to allow warfare and roll back to be an option. It remains my position that NZ is just a static USN aircraft carrier protecting Australia that our isolation makes us more not less vulnerable, in that a Russian cruiser group positioned as the Vayarg group was in 2014 univited in the Coral SEa to support Putin in the G20, could move rapidly to put immense pressure on a nation like NZ. My other main advice to Clark as to the fact the Australain Collins / Baracuda type subs were a waste of the Aussie Australian defence budget, and so useless as to be just an industry shipbuilding exercise and nothing more than a disarmement effort as diesel subs can only transit t fast with anteena above sea level and the Australian subs on the surface or at their Perth base would immediately be struck by fast long range Russian and Chinese conventional cruiser missiles. Also the main sphre of the RAN Collins sub is spying on North asian powers often apparently off North Korea and if a mechanical failure was suffred in NK waters or they are sunk or captured by NK, NZ might really need Anzus, which actually no longer exists as at the time of the Wellington declearation the USN Pacific Command pointed out that it represented the end of any US defence obligation to NZ.

Clarification. My career as a sometimes columnist on contract, concluded with Timaru Herald in 1987 ( last article Russian Navy) with NBR and The Press 1998 and the Southland Times and NZ Herald in 1996-7. Pay for NBR articles in 1983-97 about $250 ( quarter of a K) , equal in dollars to the payment of Mr Hooton today and 4 X much in real. As a leader writer I wrote at the TH offices in Timaru for about a year in 84/5- 3-5 days a week. After that I returned to varsity as always intended to study Economics and Law although I actually graduated in Accountancy and History. I collected the degrees MA (Hons) 1982 and BCom 2006 both at the Town Hall , Chrsitchurch going up on stage in 2006 for the award in my fathers/ grandfathers MA Vic, NZ / Balliol gown. The MA was awarded on the day the Sheffield was hit , incidnetally, I remember

Back onto the subject of whether NZ would support the US in a conflict with North Korea, I want to know what Jacinda thinks, did NBR ask her and what was her response? This close to an election the Prime Minister's response alone is hardly compelling...